Aaron Tracy

Well, if that's all that's stopping you, your problems are solved, Dahl tells her in front of everyone.

We've got knives in the kitchen that will do you up fine, and there are my razor blades upstairs.

Or else you can lock yourself in the car and turn on the engine, and before you know it, Bob's your uncle.

Nothing to it.

Making a joke of it is, of course, Dahl's way to cope.

And then he finds another way, turning it into his fiction.

Here's Dahl explaining to Michael Parkinson again.

Dahl is taking notes on all of his wife's funny, strange turns of phrase, and is going to put them into the mouth of the BFG.

If you haven't read that book in a while, here's a typical speech by the giant from Steven Spielberg's adaptation.

And then there would be a great rumple-dumpus, wouldn't there?

I won't tell.

That very unique speech pattern is part of what makes the BFG one of the most indelible characters ever put to print.

And it comes right out of his wife's stroke.

On the one hand, it's not Dahl's most attractive trait to poke fun at his ill wife's limitations.

On the other, turning what must have been intense private pain into his art is what all great artists have always done.

It just comes off a little more comical in Dahl's case.

But he does make the BFG's wordplay sympathetic, at least.

Like when he has him say, Please understand that I cannot be helping it if I sometimes is saying things a little squiggly.

Words is oh such a twitch-tickling problem to me.

For Neil, of course, it was much more terrifying than funny.